The fortunate ones - Tornado, just one block away.

We lost power about 7:30 pm on Friday evening as the storm came through.
When we peeked our heads out the basement door we spotted shingles in our yard.
First we were thankful all was OK, then we were worried that the shingles were ours.
We gathered our flashlights and once the storm abated we checked our house, then checked on our neighbors.
We all had downed trees and flying trampolines and trees in our swimming pools, but no major house damage and no injuries.

Sat. morning, light of day, we started finding plywood and shingles in the street and yards.
We don't know how far this piece had traveled.

A piece about the same size was planted in our backyard so far that we could not pull it out.
Knifed straight in, then broken over.

Helicopters flying over all day surveying the damage just two streets away.
Houses leveled.

Chimney gone, as well as siding and roofing.
Someones fence in the street.

Tree through someones roof.

Roads were closed because of downed trees and power-lines. It stayed that way all day till it was safe and they got it all working again. Took us fifteen hours to get our power back.

Trees twisted and bent.

(This image is from the newspapers) showing roof damage or missing roofs. This was not the worse.

But this may be.
(Also from the newspaper).

One of our local arenas had one of its A/C units picked up and slammed into its side wall leaving a truck size hole.

Clean up started.

Most of the damage was to roofs and trees, but in one small area about four houses were leveled.

On each street everyone just got busy. First working on their own places, then helping neighbors that were worse off..
We cut trees, picked up plywood and shingles and cleaned up our street.
Some are going to be inconvenienced for a while with damaged roofs and destroyed pools, but we were all able to stay in our homes Saturday night.

Only just found out (11:34 Monday morning) one of our daughters school friends lost their house in all this. This is them in the photo discovering the damage. Here is their story.

Again, photo from the papers.

We were the lucky ones.